There is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 3496150, a technique involving a network-type game system provided with plural game terminals, in which game system, plural plays (game plays) of match-up games can be performed simultaneously. In the game system, an event that has occurred in a match-up is reported to a player playing another match-up, whereby players currently participating in another play can be made aware of the existence of another player other than the opponent of the player. In this technique, when an event occurs at a game terminal of a player currently participating in a play, this event is reported to a specific communication apparatus (server apparatus), which then reports the event to another game terminal to be notified. A game terminal to be notified is decided by the specific communication apparatus based on the content of an event to be reported.
If the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 3496150 is to be implemented, it would be reasonable to use a push-based communication for notifying an event from a specific communication apparatus to a game terminal to be notified. In this case, the specific communication apparatus will have to centrally manage communication addresses of all potential game terminals that can be receivers of a notification. Accordingly, in a case in which the number of potential game terminals is large, i.e., in a case in which a large number of plays are performed simultaneously, the communication processing load at a specific communication apparatus will be excessive.
In the meantime, there is a network-type game system in which plural plays can be performed simultaneously, in which only one player participates in each play, and in which the result of each play is stored in a specific communication apparatus. Even in such a game system, it is important for a player currently participating in a play to be aware of the existence of other players. Accordingly, we now consider notifying each player participating in each play of the changes in states of plays in the overall game system. The changes in states of plays include, for example, a play having ended three minutes after the end of another play. In order to realize this, because it would be necessary to report the event of a play having ended to the game terminals of all players currently participating in all plays, the communication processing load at the specific communication apparatus will be excessive even if the technique described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 3496150 is used.
On the other hand, in a general network-type game system, a game terminal serves as a client, and a specific communication apparatus serves as a server, whereby a pull-based communication is performed. If a game system adopting this type of pull-based communication is used to implement the technique according to Japanese Patent Publication No. 3496150, a specific communication apparatus will no longer have to centrally manage a large number of communication addresses. However, in this mode, because a game terminal that can a receiver of a notification will never know of an event that has occurred at another game terminal nor the game terminal itself having changed to a terminal to be notified, the game terminal will have to access the specific communication apparatus at a predetermined interval. Therefore, in a case in which there are a large number of plays that are simultaneously performed, the communication processing load at a specific communication apparatus will be excessive. Also, because in this mode, time intervals of notifications for plural events are unlikely to coincide with time intervals of occurrences for the plural events, it will be difficult to inform a player participating in a play of the accurate transition in a state of a play in a game system.